So the boarded-up, foreclosed house across the street finally sells at a fire-sale price, saddling the entire block with a new reality: prices are falling, and so are property values up and down the block. Right? And that means property taxes on that block should be reduced accordingly, right?
Er, wrong, according to the assessor’s office [...]

Mercer County’s more affluent communities, including Princeton and West Windsor, have experienced an increase in foreclosure notices during the past year, according to an analysis by The Packet of records filed with the county clerk’s office.
Both towns have seen a tripling of initial notifications of foreclosure proceedings, year over year. In Lawrence Township, such notices [...]

U.S. sales of previously owned homes rose a healthy 3.1% in July from the previous month, but growing inventories of unsold homes and rising mortgage interest rates continue to thwart a full housing-market recovery.
Existing-home sales increased to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of five million units, the highest since February, the National Association of Realtors [...]

Economists say the larger-than-expected rise in July U.S. existing home sales doesn’t necessarily point towards stabilization, since more than a third of the sales are related to foreclosures. They also note that a record high inventory level will put downward pressure on prices going forward.The annualized pace of sales in the National Association of Realtors [...]

This lengthy update on the housing price collapse in Merced, written by the New York Times’ David Streitfeld, is worthwhile weekend reading. As with all good writing about the housing bubble and bust, the story, in the end, is pretty simple: In Merced, planners, developers, lenders and buyers were blinded by the bubble — [...]

Home foreclosures may be slowing, and though prices continue dropping, sales are up, possibly indicating a bottom to the national housing crisis may be nearing, some experts say.Home sales in Solano County were up more than 45 percent in July over last year, according to DataQuick Information Services. At just over 47 percent, only Napa [...]

The total number of foreclosure events – notices of default, notices of sale and lender purchases – in Maryland declined about 22 percent from April to June from the first quarter of 2008.
The change indicates new state laws – that require lenders to jump through more hoops and wait longer to take back a home [...]

Those waiting for signs that the housing slump is nearing an end were disappointed Thursday, as MDA DataQuick reported 2,004 San Diego County homes went into foreclosure in July, a 9 percent increase over June and a jump of nearly 213 percent over last year.
The July foreclosure tally was a record high since DataQuick began [...]

With little relief this summer, Maryland’s home foreclosure rate continued at a rapid clip through July, with Frederick County showing the biggest jump from June, according to the latest data.
Last month, 3,104 homes were in various stages of foreclosure in Maryland, or one per 741 households, according to RealtyTrac of Irvine, Calif., which monitors foreclosure [...]

In July 2008, there were a total of 8,165 resale homes recorded sold. Foreclosure activity represented 42 percent (3,470 transactions), while there were 4,695 traditional market transactions. Foreclosed transactions represent home owners losing their property to successful individual bidders or the lender of record. In June 2008, the spilt was 3,275 foreclosed homes and 4,565 [...]